Thursday, January 15, 2015

The Digital Dozen does Fairy Tales - Day 4: Godfather Death

Yay! I'm proud that I'm still keeping up with this week's Digital Dozen challenge! These challenge weeks never seem very daunting prior to the start of the weeks...but after the first few days, it gets tough! I usually run out of 'easy' concepts/ideas and really have to dig deep to come up with looks.

For Day 4 I've turned to the trusty (and creepy) Brother's Grimm fairy tales archive. One story in particular stuck out to me during my perusal of the online library - Godfather Death. Understandably I was immediately intrigued and clicked on the story.Grandfather Death tells the story of a man with too many children and no real means care for them. The father goes in search of someone to be the godfather of his new son and comes (conveniently) across, God, the devil, and death himself. In the tale, the father first turns down god (for god let's the poor suffer and the rich gain) and then turns down the devil (for he deceives mankind and leads them astray), deeming both unfit as godfathers. When he comes across Death, Death argues that he is the best fit for godfather as he "makes everyone equal" by taking both from the rich and the poor. He also offers to make the father's son rich and famous, and so, the newborn baby finds a new godfather.
As the boy grows up, Death shows the boy how to be the most famous physician in the world, so long as the boy always saves the people Death allows him to save, and letting die those Death must take. As I'm sure you can imagine, the boy eventually betrays death, not once, but twice. Death had warned that if he was betrayed, he would take the boy for his own (and death always keeps his word). He takes him to an underground cavern where he shows the boy endless rows of burning and flickering candles, each at different stages of being burnt out. He explains that the candles are the lives of both the young and the old and that everyone's light must go out at some point...including the boy's.
Whew! That was a lot of text (and you can read the non-cliffnotes version here that probably makes MUCH more sense!) but I wanted to set up the art! I was directly inspired by this deviant art piece that depicts the final scene of Godfather Death, when he is showing the boy the flickering candles. I tried my best to duplicate the artwork, but I'm afraid I didn't execute the look as well as I'd hoped.
I used a base of China Glaze's Five Rules and painted the rest with acrylic paints. I tried to keep the sketched look of the original drawing, but I think it's turned out a bit messy instead. Oh well!
What do you think of these? Have you heard this fairy tale before? I always forget just how dark some of the Brother's Grimm stories can be!